Page 95 of Death on a Scottish Train

After dumping my bag inside the tent that had been set up for medical at the end of the field, I walked back outside to watch the games. They were in the middle of the hammer throw. I only knew that because I enjoyed watching the summer Olympics and that had been one of the events.

The men were huge, and it was amazing to see such feats of power and strength. I couldn’t imagine even picking up the tool they used, and they tossed it so far.

While the patient we treated waited on the sidelines, his friends were warming up for the event. Just behind them I noticed Catherine Allan, the dead man’s executive assistant, sitting with Davina.

They were flirting with the men who were warming up.

“Well, that didn’t take long.”

“What’s that?” Ewan asked from beside me.

I may have laughed nervously.

“Do you have ninja powers? How do you always sneak up on me like that?”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” he said gruffly. “You were the one who wasn’t paying attention to your surroundings. We’ve talked about this: whenyou’re on a case, you always need to stay aware of everything going on around you.”

He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“You could also announce yourself,” I said, bristling slightly. But I couldn’t help but smile. “Is there something you needed?”

“No. I was curious who you were looking at,” he said. Then he followed my line of vision.

“Were we aware they knew one another?” I asked.

“No,” he said suspiciously.

They were laughing and, as broken-hearted as Davina had seemed at Jasper’s shop, she was definitely over it.

“Neither of them seems particularly sad given what they’ve been through in the last week. I mean, I’m all about finding joy where you can, but something about this doesn’t fit right. Do you think they murdered Jacks together?”

He chuckled. “You are more suspicious than I am, which is saying something. They are single lasses who are having fun at the games. Where is an inkling of proof?”

“Oh, come now. You are just as suspicious of them as I am.”

“Only that they seem to know one another and that hasn’t come up in any of the conversations we’ve had with them. But that doesn’t make either of them guilty. Also, which one is the criminal mastermind who thought to put bee venom in a lip balm? And what would be the motive?”

“I feel like you just made a jab at their intelligence, but you make some good points. When you think about it, though, no one in his inner circle seems to be the type who would do something like that. Far be it from me to say they aren’t intelligent enough, but the killer had done their research. Which reminds me of something.”

“What’s that?”

“Well we know that the lip balm was clean when Kiara sold it. And we know it had to be someone in close proximity.”

“Right.”

“But who is to say it is just one person? It could be that a couple of his disgruntled clients could have banded together.”

“We had this convo in the car,” he said.

“I know. I’m just working things out in my head, and I need to say it out loud. It is part of my process.”

“OK. We’ve gone over those lists, though,” he said. “All of the clients either had an alibi or hadn’t seen him in months. And again, access is the biggest part of this puzzle.”

“I agree. We keep coming back to those he worked with, and it always seems to be them. But they have alibis. All of them, except the mistress. She was actually at the train station, but she most likely wouldn’t have had access to his lip balms.”

He was quiet, and I glanced up at him. He stared at the flirting women, but then nodded.

“You’re right,” I said. “I know we need proof, but I’ve been thinking about scenarios. What if he bought his supply of lip balms and then went to work on the train. And maybe they were just sitting out.”